


Fact Core's life

by TetraTerantula



Category: Portal (Video Game), Portal 2: The (Unauthorized) Musical - geekenders
Genre: Fact Core is not so stuck up, Fact core and friends, How Do I Tag, No shipping, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:02:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25172830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetraTerantula/pseuds/TetraTerantula
Summary: Ah, fact core. The annoying, incorrect pink ball of facts. Well, I wrote a backstory! Fact core from just before becoming a core to years after Wheatley's defeat. Let's see what's in this poor boy's brain.Name in progress, suggestions welcome.
Relationships: Adventure Core & Fact Core, Adventure Core & Space Core
Kudos: 12





	Fact Core's life

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this. Enjoy I guess. Any criticism is very welcome!

The fact core wasn’t always a fact core. No, fact core used to be a great scientist in aperture science! One of the best. His ego didn’t come from nowhere, y’know? Always a bright lad. What science division was he in? Oh yeah. Personality core construction. AI, the shells, things like that. He made great shells. Always ready for the right personality. The basic AI was easy for him. Some basic coding, not much, y’know. Needed space for the actual personality and AI to do their thing. He made a few shells, just the basic ones to do the boring tasks. A protocol core. Morality core for GLaDOS. Intellect dampening core for GLaDOS. They sometimes worked, most did, but some were trashed. If they remembered anything, anything at all, of their previous lives, they would be trashed. The Intellect dampening core remembered their name. Wheatley, was it? No matter. Though Wheatley remembered, it may serve as a way to be more annoying to GLaDOS. And so Wheatley went on, and it worked. (a year or so later, before Chell, Wheatley fell off and GLaDOS put him in charge of the test subjects.)

One day, they wanted to make a separate protocol core. For emergencies? That sounded about right. They said they wanted someone smart and someone who would abide by the rules, no matter what. Fact Core agreed and started work on the shell. Once it was done, he presented the sphere with the pink Iris to the others. Gave him a flashlight and a plugin to control the alarms. They clapped, told him good work, then told him who was going to be in that little sphere.

That announcement crushed him. He sputtered about how he was important in making the spheres, how he didn’t want to live forever. The usual. Taken away. He cried out in vain as security took him into a room with his colleague. The look of relief as he saw him quickly turned into fear as the operation began. 

When he awoke again, he didn’t remember anything other than his purpose. The protocol must be protected. Static was in his mind as he looked around. He heard a voice. Somehow made sense of it. “What’s your function?” It asked. To protect protocol should’ve been the answer. He replied with “Fact: my purpose is to tell facts.” A second question. “What’s your name?” “Fact: my name is Craig. No- Proto- Cr- Fact core. My name is Fact core.” Fact core began spitting out random facts. Largely incorrect facts. “Rats cannot throw up.” “the square root of rope is string.” 

Broken again, he heard the scientists say. Throw him with the rest, they said. So they did. Into the pile of now dead cores, ready to be deactivated. And he was forgotten. They said to turn him off soon. They never did! Hah! And so Fact Core waited in that cell for days. Months, even. Two cores popped into that cell within that time. Both off, but obviously design had deteriorated. The off switch was on the outside! And so with some hard movement, both bots were on again. They talked, though the yellow one didn’t talk much other than space, and the green one was rather annoying and loud. 

They became great friends, and they told stories, mostly made up, and played games, though they couldn’t go anywhere. And fact core, though he would never admit it, would never give them up for anything. And so when a human, of all things, passed by after such a long time of inactivity (it felt like a million years! Adventure core was for once running out of ideas on stories to tell.) The human held the portal gun, Aperture’s greatest invention. Apart from the cores that fact core made, and GLaDOS, of course. 

When a claw came to pick them up like a claw machine, Fact core was at first, nervous. What if it was taking him to be incinerated? What if they were going to separate the core from his friends? So he did the only thing he could think to do. Spit facts. His friends were taken first. First Space, then Adventure, and then himself. When he saw them on the- was that… Wheatley? In GLaDoS’s body? They were going to be used as corruption cores! And so he didn’t struggle. He still, however, told facts to calm himself down. A bit later, the human had… died? No, the human was still alive. Wait, what was she doing with the portal gun? Wheatley was sucked into the portal, and Fact was just hanging on- barely. With panic in his voice, he spoke of all the relevant facts he knew, his mind racing too fast to make normal sentences. Adventure core was having a blast, and space core- space core just let go! 

When the portal closed, everything that just happened raced through Fact’s mind, over and over. Adventure rolled beside him, talking about how fun that was. Everything seemed to be in order- wait. Space core is gone! With a call to Adventure, who immediately got sad. If cores could cry, Fact would have at the realization that Space core was floating in space now. 

The days after that battle, GLaDOS fixed up the labs and most of the things were back to normal again. Fact core was still sad about Space core’s disappearance, but adventure was able to get him to properly do what She said. He spent like half of his reserve energy moping around and sitting on the floor, thinking. “Even if yer mopin’ round, ye gotta keep energized, mate!” He said. GLaDOS thanked them for their help defeating Wheatley by not deactivating them. The years after that went by quite fast, as Fact sphere went around interviewing other cores because She said that the catalog exploded. (there were many more than he would have ever guessed.) The stages of grief and denial were over, and now Fact sphere had to accept that Space core was gone. 

“I guess nothing stays forever. That’s something I learned.”


End file.
